160 THE LIGHT OF DAY 



aroused. It is doubtful if the great mass of man- 

 kind give any intellectual assent to the doctrines of 

 their faith. The fathers of the church, in attempting 

 to give an intellectual basis to them, were led into 

 curious absurdities. Thus Irenaeus said there must 

 be four Gospels, instead of three, because there were 

 four winds, and four corners of heaven, etc. Our 

 theologians, in their appeal to reason, have not fared 

 much better. Worship, veneration, adoration, are 

 not intellectual acts, but motions of the spirit. Our 

 assent to a doctrine of science, on the other hand, is 

 necessarily intellectual. It is not barren, because 

 intellectual results are alone to be expected. The 

 doctrine of evolution has stimulated the mind of our 

 age to an unprecedented degree. It has a bearing 

 upon religion only when religion appeals to the rea- 

 son with a rival scheme of creation. Science alone 

 can meet our demand for knowledge of the visible 

 world. But after science has done its best, is not 

 the mystery as deep as ever ? Is there not the same 

 ground for faith, worship, adoration, as ever ? 



Religion is older than science. Man worshiped 

 and adored long before he sought the reasons and 

 the meaning of things. At the same time it must 

 be owned that man has become less and less re- 

 ligious from the first dawn of civilization to the 

 present day. The intellectual point of view has 

 prevailed more and more. With all our Chris- 

 tianity the ancient communities, Egypt, Greece, 

 Home, were much more religious than we are ; that 

 is, life, both individual and natural, faced much 



